PS Sincerity
by sera-chan011
Summary: RE-PUBLISHED * LENKAHO * If there was something Hino Kahoko did not like at that very moment, it was being so small anyone could actually step on her. Literally. She just didn't realize how Tsukimori Len fit in the picture.


**[**_Originally written and published January 2011_**]**

**P.S. Sincerity**

If there was something Hino Kahoko did not like at that very moment, it was being so small anyone could actually step on her. _Literally_.

It made her almost cry tears of anxiety, finding herself so minuscule amidst the gigantic people all around her. She never felt so desperate before, and she already could sense all hope in her diminishing. Also, Hino Kahoko hated the fact that she could not recognise any of the colossal people surrounding her.

The redhead whimpered the moment a foot almost crushed her. She leaned her back towards the brick wall adjacent the sidewalk, her arms spread wide. Hino had never felt so, so screwed before. She frowned, a groan of desperation escaping her lips.

She tried to replay the exact moment she magically became _really_ tiny.

Hino recalled being sent off by her mother to the grocery store to buy the ingredients they needed later that night for their New Year's Eve dinner. These ingredients, Hino thought, were suspiciously stolen (hence, she was asked to buy again). By whom, she had no idea.

Before she could even enter the automatic doors of the grocery store, she had seen Tsuchiura Ryoutaro passing by. He did not seem to have noticed her so she took the initiative to greet him first. However, when she opened her mouth to speak, something fell into her mouth.

A sweet, hard, and round thing. A thing that highly resembled a candy. Hino had felt it saunter down to her throat, choking her. The next thing she knew, her handbag had lay forgotten on the pavement, herself smaller than her bag.

She briefly wondered where Tsuchiura Ryoutaro could be. He _had_ to be somewhere. He _had_ to be because she needed anyone's help right then.

Why couldn't anyone notice her? _Help_ her?

"Hino?"

The mentioned crimson-haired girl looked up sideways to the speaker. Her mouth hung.

"Tsukimori-kun?" she called out. She stared at his confused and stunned face, taking in the difference in the Tsukimori's voice. Her face lightened in newfound hope. "Tsukimori-kun, it really is you! I-I need your help. Please."

Tsukimori blinked down at her and cocked his head. He frowned and bent down towards her, extending out a hand for her to hop on.

"What is this all about?" he inquired, looking around for any nosy stranger who might see them. "What . . . what happened to you?"

Hino held on to his palm and bowed her head down. "I don't . . . I don't really know, Tsukimori-kun," she said. "All I know is that I was about to greet Tsuchiura-kun but then something fell into my mouth. Then . . . then . . . ."

The blue-haired boy sighed. "Then you morphed into a little and pitiful creature," he provided at her lack of words.

At the reference, Hino pouted. "I'm little now, yes, but not pitiful! But Tsukimori-kun . . . c-can I stay with you?"

Tsukimori frowned further. He sighed and raked his other hand along his blue tresses.

Tsukimori, on the other hand, had been walking downtown towards a new music shop just right across the local grocery store. When he was already staring in the placard on the door that had said _Open_, he had a sudden urge to look across the street and there he had found Hino Kahoko.

He had been planning to just ignore the presence of the redhead, but before he could turn away, his eyes met an event he had never thought could happen. She had vanished. His eyes had been glued to her the entire time, and it was not so crowded, that was why he had been supremely startled to suddenly find her gone.

It had taken him some few internal arguments and minutes before he had trudged towards the opposite side of the street.

He ignored the feeling, but he was relieved to find her there. Small and tiny, he thought in the back of his mind.

Staring at the girl whose back hunched in wary, he sighed.

"I'll take you home," he said. He could not possibly bring her to their house and explain things he was not even enlightened in to her mother or sister. Tsukimori would rather take her to his house than to open his mouth and explain out-of-the-blue notions.

Besides, although he would deny it, he could not take to see her so apprehensive. He had this unspoken concern for her, and he knew she knew of it.

"I —" started Hino, but her voice hitched at her throat. Before any of them knew it, she had already started crying.

Tsukimori almost groaned when a rather loud sob escaped her lips.

"I'm sorry for this trouble!" the redhead squeaked. "I don't know what to do had you not come . . . ."

The lad inhaled and closed his eyes. He did not have a choice, did he?

**.**

It was already six in the evening. The sun had long set, considering it was somehow still winter. Hino noted how her mother would be pulling her own hairs out because of worry.

She was there, sitting on Tsukimori Len's bedroom's windowsill, looking out to the empty road. It had been three hours of her like that, and she had done nothing but sit there, worry, and not do something about it. She was so small her brain could be smaller.

Tsukimori did not help at anything, either. He did not event try to comfort her or say he would try to find a solution to it . . . nothing.

He had left a few minutes earlier that hour, saying he would get both of them some snacks to eat while . . . neither of them knew what they were really waiting for.

"This _is_ not helping," Hino muttered to herself. "And this _is_ not happening."

Whoever said sitting on the windowsill and _thinking_ would do you good in times when you magically turned into a perfect epitome of Thumbelina? That person would have to be badly insane.

Hino could only sigh. What was waiting for her for the coming New Year? And how could she end her year _this_ way?

**.**

Tsukimori leaned against the counter in the kitchen. Many things wandered in his head — things which, unfortunately, involved his student's predicament.

It was absurd, he thought.

The thing — magic — that had happened to Hino Kahoko was far from real. It was something impossible to decipher especially when they had no idea how she ended up like that. Sure, there was the incident of swallowing a foreign object. What they did not know was what that was and from where it came. That was the first time Tsukimori experienced something surreal — so twisted it seemed very false.

He did not even know why he was trying to figure out how she could return to her real form. Tsukimori exhaled a breath he did not realise he held.

This was going to be difficult.

Just then, when he was about to pick up the saucer containing a slice of cake, a foreign object broke through the glass window of the kitchen and knocked his hand off. Then there was a tiny breaking sound.

From the darkness of the kitchen, Tsukimori squinted his eyes to figure out what the object was. He bent down to the floor to reach up to it but something sharp cut a part of his skin.

"Damn," he hissed, clutching his right hand. He wetted his dried lips and felt for the light switch.

As light overcame darkness, he noticed that his hand was slightly bleeding — a fact which he frowned upon. He had been careless to simply dip his hand down not knowing what he would touch. He bit back a curse as his eyes settled on the tiled floor.

A wooden cork rolled to his feet, and shards of glasses were everywhere. There was a seemingly small, broken bottle which was supposed to be covered with a cork but broke instead. And there, harmlessly lying amidst the splinters, was a brown sheet of paper.

With his injured hand, he picked the paper up. He shook it to rid of the tiny splinters, and, curious, he uncoiled the rolled sheet and stared at a neat penmanship. He read what was written and scowled.

"_What?_"

**.**

Hino frowned at the closed door. It had been almost an hour since Tsukimori left and he had not returned since. That instance worried her.

She sighed and decided to hop off the sill to explore the prodigy's bedroom. It was rather big, perhaps fifteen metre squared, with a huge bed sitting harmlessly on one side. There were two large windows — one opposite the door and the other to the adjacent wall to it. A music stand stood in one corner, while Tsukimori's violin lay temporarily untouched atop the desk beside the stand.

It would take quite a walk for Hino to reach it, so she settled to advancing towards the bedside table.

She grinned to her self and said, "I wonder what he could have kept inside his drawers. . . ."

She stalked towards the desk and smiled when she realised that the second to the lowest drawer was slightly ajar. Hino's feet touched the wooden base of the desk, and, with forced strength, pulled the drawer out. The redhead almost let out a squeal of triumph when she was able to pull it open, wide enough for her to enter.

It did not take her that long to hop in. In fact, she did it without breaking much of a sweat. She frowned when she became conscious of the fact that she had stepped on something that _cracked_. Gulping, Hino looked down.

The lights were on so it did not really prolong Hino's comprehension on what she had accidentally hopped onto. It was a photo frame that held a definite picturesque —

— a young, smiling Tsukimori Len.

**.**

Hino wondered why he would not show that smile of his to everyone. And to _her_.

**.**

The blue-haired lad returned fifteen minutes later, frowning. In his hand was a small plate of cake. It surprised him that from the windowsill, Hino, was then sitting comfortably on his bed.

"What were you doing while I was gone?" he asked.

"Where did you go and what did you do?" asked Hino back, naive curiosity apparent in her eyes.

Tsukimori sighed. "It is rude to answer a question with another question, Hino."

Hino blushed. "Oh."

The boy raised an eyebrow. _Oh_? Seriously, _oh_?

"I brought you something to eat," said Tsukimori, setting the plate of cake in front of Hino. He sat with her on the bed and cocked his eyebrows at the penlights sitting with the small Hino. He nodded to the objects and asked, "What are you doing with those?"

Hino looked at her side. She smiled. "These?" she asked, motioning towards the penlights. She grinned up at Tsukimori and kindly said, "Do you mind turning the lights off, Tsukimori-kun?"

Tsukimori shook his head no and proceeded to switching the lights off. It was so black that one person would have thought he had gone blind. That was, if not because of the little night light from the outside. Hino asked the Tsukimori to pull the curtains closed and the lad did so.

"What's this that you're planning, Little Hino?"

There was a miniature laugh. "_Little Hino_? Nice."

Tsukimori ignored the comment. A few seconds later, there was a small dot of white light. The young man narrowed his eyes. The dot of light vanished. There was another dot of light — red, this time. Then it vanished, too. Again, there was another dot of light — yellow; it, then, vanished. Then it repeated and repeated, two colours at a time, blinking at him.

Later on, the blinking dots of lights started to move around and around. The lights vanished. It was dark once again. Then, out-the-blue, there came a tiny whisper — so tiny it was almost unheard.

"I figured you aren't celebrating New Year this time with your parents, are you, Tsukimori-kun? Or with anyone else?"

He did not reply.

"I-I take it that these penlights I saw in your drawer are from your parents?"

He did not reply. He could not see her but he knew she was smiling that sympathetic smile of her again. Tsukimori did not want to see that. He never wanted to see that.

"Although futile, I tried to. . . ." Hino trailed off. She could have been blushing by then — but he did not know because of the darkness. "I tried to show you a made-up firework — light-work, if you please. And since these penlights came from your parents, they would have seemed to be with you this year."

"I did not give you permission to delve into my personal drawer."

His voice was ice cold — it was almost scary in the dark when you could not see the speaker. Hino wondered where he was standing.

"I — I'm sorry," started Hino, slightly panicking. "I was just trying to be —"

"Thank you for your concern, Hino." Pause. "I . . ."

Words were muttered, and then the voice trailed off. There was silence.

The lamp atop the bedside desk turned on, and light sauntered into the dark room. Tsukimori's arm was stretched towards the lamp, fingers touching the switch, body angled towards the other soul on the bed.

Behind red tresses, ochre-coloured eyes widened in surprise.

Tsukimori Len's gigantic lips were silently perched on top of her head. It had to be a dream. It _had _to be.

When Tsukimori pulled away, he looked at anywhere but Hino. It was slightly embarrassing, but he hoped it worked.

And, to Hino's bewildered surprise, it did.

**.**

_Hi! Um. _

_WE'RE SO SORRY! WE'RE SO SORRY! WE'RE SO SORRY, TSUKIMORI-SAN! Your name was written in the placard by your house's gate, by the way, so we, uh, just sent this letter in haste. And we have another thing to be sorry about _—_ your broken window. But that's beside the case._

_The thing is, we are the cause of your lady friend's demise _—_ we don't mean to make it sound like death but her inner turmoil! Yes, inner turmoil. Uhhh . . . there's a magic that had gone wrong, believe it or not, and it's because of a friend of ours. WE'RE SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE, but we think it's only you who can help that poor girl._

_How? Well, you'll just have to confess whatever thoughts go on your mind concerning her _—_ deep feelings (friendly feelings, if not romantical). Then do the first thing that had flashed into your mind the moment you confessed your thoughts. That should end the magic._

_We're sorry again! _

_xo xo xo_

_K & M_

**.**

Tsukimori's eyes watched as the hand of the clock struck twelve. He blinked. From the outside, fireworks started to show up, mesmerising a number of people of all ages. He looked up outside and heard the phone in his room ring.

He did not answer it, however, and just heard a beep.

_"Len, your father and I are sorry we can't be there this time. We take it that the clock has struck twelve?"_ There was a small laugh. _"Happy New Year, Len. Have a good year."_

Then there was another beep. A small smile escaped in his lips.

There was another ring. He did not answer, for the second time. Then there was a beep.

_". . . Tsukimori-kun . . . I. . . ."_ There was a pause, and Tsukimori's head snapped to the direction of the machine. _"Thank you so much, Tsukimori-kun! I don't know if you mean the . . . uhh . . . the _kiss_ . . . and your words. But _—_ I wish you all the best this year, Tsukimori-kun! Happy New Year!"_

There was another beep.

The picturesque Hino wished to see made itself concrete in Tsukimori's face.

**.**

_p.s. Be sincere in your words and actions._

**.**

Somewhere, watching the firework display while walking, were two other souls.

"Mirmo, next time, don't disappoint Rima, OK?" said a girl with blonde hair tied up into pigtails. "Or incidents like this would take place. _Again_. And we would not want that to happen, would we?"

A small creature with bleached hair huffed. His blue bonnet-like headgear bobbed up and down as he settled himself comfortably on his human friend's shoulder, a pack of _Kumocho _chocolates in his small hands.

Then the girl sighed.

"Isn't it cool that he actually said he loves her?" The girl sighed again, a dreamy look in her eyes. "I want someone to tell me he loves me."

Mirmo rolled his eyes. "Kaede, you already had Setsu say he likes you!"

Apparently, _like_ was very different from _love_.

END.


End file.
